Local

Forget boring Saturday nights at home in front of the TV. Lancaster has a new hotspot where locals can dance, socialize, eat and play.
The recently renovated Lancaster Bowling Center buzzed with activity Jan. 12 as locals gathered for dancing, live music, bowling and games at the Christian Services hub off Great Falls Highway.

South Carolina’s Liberty Trail of Revolutionary War battlefields will feature high-tech storytelling, with smartphone apps that will offer personal tours of the historic sites.
Information at each stop will be disseminated using the latest technology available, said historian and author Doug Bostick, executive director of the nonprofit S.C. Battlefield Preservation Trust.
Bostick will give an update on the Liberty Trail at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Historic Lancaster County Courthouse as part of the annual Katawba Valley Land Trust speaker series.

With a bitterly cold start to this week, the new Lancaster County Warming Center has seen an influx of homeless residents staying the night.
“We’ve had 12 people stay so far, and we need to get the word out more,” said Sharon Novinger, executive director of Lancaster County Partners for Youth. “Law enforcement knows about the shelter, and they do let people know in the community when they see them.”
The warming center is inside the Prime Time for Seniors Center, 309 S. Plantation Road (across from Springdale Recreation Complex).

Lancaster County residents came together Saturday afternoon to celebrate the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a parade and commemoration service.
The sixth-annual I Have a Dream Parade began at 3 p.m. at the Barr Street school campus and wound through a rainy downtown Lancaster, followed by a 4 p.m. celebration at Barr Street Auditorium. The parade, with more than 100 entrants, was changed this year to begin and end at Barr Street School.

CHARLESTON – Clemson University conservators have uncovered new evidence that may help explain why the Hunley submarine vanished off the coast of Charleston during the Civil War.
The new discovery resulted from the long, painstaking process of removing concretion – the rock-hard layer of sand, shell and sea life – that gradually encased the Hunley during the nearly 136 years she rested on the sea floor.

COLUMBIA – A request from the S.C. Election Commission to replace the state’s well-worn electronic voting system is drawing the attention of Lancaster County’s legislative delegation.
“Our state is in desperate need of new voting machines. We’re still using machines purchased after the 2000 presidential election,” said Rep. Brandon Newton (R-45).
On Tuesday, the election commission asked state lawmakers for $60 million to buy a new system in time for the 2020 election.

It didn’t take long for the media spotlight to find Mick Mulvaney.
In his first two weeks as President Trump’s chief of staff, helping navigate the longest government shutdown ever, the 51-year-old ex-congressman has been popping up in the Washington Post, The New York Times and other news outlets.
Stories have dissected a failed land deal that he was involved in more than a decade ago, his possible interest in becoming the University of South Carolina’s next president, and the less-restrictive management style he has initiated at the White House.

When Diana Knight gets riled up about Lancaster County’s lack of tough animal-cruelty ordinances – and she does that a lot – she thinks about Shiloh the schnauzer.
Animal control officers found him last June with his collar embedded beneath his skin. It had been left so tight for so long that the skin grew around it and even grafted onto it, said Knight, director of the Lancaster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Although 10 years have passed, Ann and Carl Oblak will never forget Jan. 15, 2009 – the day their plane crashed into the Hudson River.
The couple had recently moved into their new home in Sun City Carolina Lakes and were returning from visiting friends in New York.
“It was snowing that morning and we arrived early at the airport to try to get an earlier flight, but they didn’t have any room,” said Ann, 81.